Supernatural: Back and to the Future (15x01)

We're back! Man, this show. Say what you will about it, but you have to admit it's an institution. I'm already pretty emotional about the fact that this is going to be our last season. And it looks like the showrunners are going to be leaning hard into the nostalgia factor. I for one am super okay with that.

Cons:

I know it's mandatory that everyone who dies in this show gets brought back, and that every actor gets to play different characters. And I can't even be that mad about Jack's body being possessed by some random demon, because Alex Calvert is clearly having so much fun. But I want to take this opportunity to express some healthy skepticism about this Belphegor character. Hopefully I'll like where this is going, but for now it just seems like a shoe-horned excuse to keep Calvert around, and a convenient work-around for any insurmountable problems that Team Free Will faces. If they don't know what to do next, convenient demon buddy happens to know just the spell to help. I can see that getting really old, really fast, even if the character seems like a lot of fun.

Pros:

And... yeah, the character does seem like a lot of fun. He's quippy but in his own unique way, he self-describes himself as a clock-puncher from Hell. He's not some super-powered mega-monster. At least, as far as we know. He's just part of the fabric of Hell, and he wants things back the way they were before Chuck screwed everything up. He's flirty with Dean, which is hilariously uncomfortable, and he's picking up hard on the lover's spat between Dean and Cas, which is just so much fun to watch. I could definitely be convinced to spend some more time around this character, as long as his ultimate purpose makes sense and isn't completely contrived.

Sam, Dean, and Cas are all dealing with their grief and trauma in interesting ways. I like that Sam goes in to this sad sort of logic-mode, where he asks Cas if it's possible to save Jack, and when he's told no, he basically pushes it aside. He's not any happier about Jack's body being possessed than Cas is, but he knows that they need all the help they can get. Cas, meanwhile, is operating on anger, which is frankly pretty understandable. He is the most viscerally affected to see Belphegor "defiling Jack's corpse," and he later remarks to Dean that he can't even look at him. And Dean... well, Dean seems to be repressing the worst of his emotions as per usual. He's oddly calm throughout the whole episode, and I think the fact that Dean had been ready to kill Jack himself is going to end up complicating his grieving process going forward. It's like a delayed reaction - Jack, the Jack they all knew and loved, was kind-of-sort-of already gone, from the moment his soul was all used up. But grief doesn't work along logical lines like that, and I think we're going to see Dean and the others grappling with that in some interesting ways.

I'm not expecting anything real to happen along the Destiel front, obviously, because I've learned to live in a constant state of low expectations, but I am at the very least excited about the Dean and Cas friendship being explored more this season. Given the external reality, Dean, Cas, and Sam are going to have to work together to save the day. But Dean and Cas are not in a good place right now, and we're seeing the cracks in that relationship very clearly. They're still helping each other however they can, but Dean can't even properly check in with Cas - he asks him if he's okay, and then Cas says "yes, but - " and Dean interrupts him and walks away. It's awkward enough that Belphegor picks up on it. There's not a ton going on here yet, but I'm excited to track it as it does.

Holy nostalgia, Batman! This episode was truly for the fans, the ones who have seen every episode. And I'm good with that. Supernatural is a weird show for so many reasons, and one of those reasons is that it has a highly dedicated fan-base, and probably not very many casual viewers. This final season needs to be its own thing, in some ways, but it also needs to be a tribute to fifteen years on the air. We see lots of early season monsters, like the Woman in White and Bloody Mary. We see a return of a clown ghost, as Sam has to face down his worst fear. We get Sam and Dean standing at the back of the impala, and Sam says "we got work to do," and then the scene flickers to pilot Sam and Dean in the same position. And like... it's manipulative and it's trying to make me feel affection for this show, and it is WORKING. 100%. I'm all about it.

One thing I really admire about this episode is that it's just the good guys against a bunch of ghosts, but it doesn't feel like the stakes have been dramatically lowered either. As Sam says, what's one more apocalypse? Chuck is gone now, he's grown tired of the story and he's left them to their own devices. But that might be a good thing. If they've never really had free will up to this moment, they certainly have it now. I'm excited to explore the ramifications of that.

Sam's bullet wound has me WORRIED. Cas couldn't cure it, and he got weird flashes of evil within him when Cas tried. Is this foreshadowing a return of Lucifer? We already know that all of Hell has been opened up, which means that Michael - this world's Michael - could very well be on the loose. Are we going back to the brother vs. brother at the end of the world thing? Ten seasons later? I would honestly be pretty okay with that. It would certainly bring things full circle. I can't wait for all the pain and angst!

So that's where I'll stop. This episode did a good job of setting up stuff. All of the baddies that Sam and Dean have defeated over the years have suddenly returned. They've got to deal with that. Dean and Cas need to deal with their relationship. Jack is dead and his body is being used by this weird snraky "Crowley Jr." demon figure. Sam has been shot and the wound appears to be cursed in some way. There are lots of threads to explore moving forward, and so far I'm feeling excited and invigorated to find out where it all leads!

9/10